


The Diamond Sky

by Michael Stonožka (JewJitsue)



Series: Integrated Worlds [18]
Category: Homestuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-28 04:31:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16716639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JewJitsue/pseuds/Michael%20Stono%C5%BEka
Summary: For the first time ever, Rabbi Kecyah Zarpad details his experiences in the Alternian Cold War in this thrilling anthology.(I wrote this a year and a half ago for IW, however most of it didn't fit into the IW canon. So I reworked it. enjoy!)





	The Diamond Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Corvid_Knight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corvid_Knight/gifts).



In the time leading up to the start of the Ten Day War, though we didn’t know it would happen, there was little for us to do. Our commanders did their best to keep us working, but given the strategic unimportance of the station we had captured, there was really nothing left to do but wait for something to happen somewhere else. That didn’t stop us, of course. Even though we had long since overcome the imperial conditioning, we all still had trouble breaking the subtle, subconscious dread of inactivity.  


After the Imperialists had captured a base on the outskirts of UE territory, in the short period of conflict before the treaty that started the cold war was ratified, they placed the station we later captured there to solidify their claim, and at that time it served no other purpose than to wiretap the UE. As the lack of free labour was becoming an increasingly serious problem for the empire, they abducted a number of humans and carapacians from the captured base, and placed them on the station to do the manual tasks they couldn’t spare any trolls to do. They were almost totally unable to interact with the biotechnology used in the essencial systems due to their unique physiology, so they were allowed to wander around the station more or less unsupervised. Once the resistance kicked the empire out of the system, that situation was kept more or less intact, just without the slave labour. 

It was in that period of limbo before the war that I build a casual familiarity with one of the humans, a man who only ever introduced himself as “Fred”. In a vain effort to keep myself busy, I had started most of my time in the antenna complex, a hang-out spot we shared most days. Fred was a short, harmless man with folded eyes, and despite our utter lack of resources, entertainment, or really anything not associated with horrible sadness, he always managed to have a more or less cheerful attitude. Or at least I assumed he did, as his accent was so thick I only understood around half of everything he ever said to me, and had to often ask for help from my more english-fluent comrades. I learned later that he had been a Christian missionary, traveling the territories of the UE when they had first made contact with the empire, and was subsequently stranded on that particular base after all public transportation was shut down around him. Our conversations were often brief and cloudy, but all together enjoyable. My english improved more in those days than it had previously, and it was my first introduction to the concept of theology (Though as is obvious his particular sect was not the one I eventually stuck with, to his muted but clear dismay). He spent almost all of his time trying to translate passages from the New Testament into Alternian, reading from a copy of the bible that he had somehow kept safe and intact throughout all 12 sweeps of his servitude on this station. His effort however, while valiant in his evident devotion, was in my view more detrimental to his cause than anything he had yet encountered. Though there was one passage that he related well enough the day before the war to leave an impact on me.

**_“12_ ** _ I watched as he opened the sixth seal. There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red,  _

**_13_ ** _ And the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind.” _

  


At first, I felt frustrated with him. After all we’ve been through, after all YOU have been through, doing everything in our power to make sure hope stays alive, why read about the end of the world? Why tell me stories of the sun going black and the land opening beneath our feet, to crush our bones and burn us alive? I mulled over and wallowed in my own confusion and pessimism, pushed into an unbreakable mood of hopelessness, up until the moment I found myself frozen in the middle of a corridor, listening to the report that a UE battleship had been fired on by an Alternian fighter. The cold war just turned hot.

We were working in nothing more than a glorified antenna that hadn’t been in major use since the resistance captured it. For that reason we could all rest assured that none of the fighting, if it came to our system at all, would be anywhere near us. The most we would see was the dim flashes of hyperspace fissures, and maybe some particularly bright explosions if we looked in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. However, for all ten days of the war, none of us got a moment of sleep. The main reason was a desire to be ready if any ships entered our system, if only to document their presence for the sake of the UE and resistance. One can easily imagine our mixture of relief and lethal dread when the small fleet exited hyperspace, two hours before the Psiionic worked his miracle. Just enough time for the group of 3 ships to arrive in orbit around the mother planet of the station.

By this time, I had forgotten almost all about Fred’s description of the Rapture, and instead opted to sustain my prolonged depressive relapse by sending myself into a practically vegetative state, as i contemplated the ultimate irrelevancy of our efforts. I didn’t doubt our cause, but every now and then I became aware of the inevitability of entropy, an awareness that I would be unable to pull myself out for some time. The same question kept running through my mind: “ Khè topaldza, Ċadz jodetz?” . If death is inevitable, then why are we working so hard? Is it not logical to build our own comforts so that when we sleep for the last time, we are in a warm bed? If all things must eventually burn, then why are we fighting so hard to help this galaxy? Is it not easier to try to preserve ourselves from pain so we might rot in peace? The feeling of existential anguish was excruciating, but at the same time almost intoxicating. 

Then the ships entered visual range, a discover that came after one of the humans pointed toward the window and began yelling in an incoherent panic. The next few minutes heard the pounding of footfalls as the small crew scrambled to their posts. We knew that the target of the ships was the planet below, and they wouldn’t bother with us anytime soon (the station had no in-built defences, so we couldn’t do much more than watch). Somebody put the receiver feed on the intercom speakers, and we listened for several moments as the ships transmitted intimidating warnings about surrendering, and the planet’s reply was a full torpedo barrage.

I had never witnessed orbital combat before, since I had never known any other assignment than this one. I didn’t get a chance to see it up close, but frankly seeing the kilometer long trails of blue and red from torpedo fire, and the bright flashes of the detonations as the ships and planet exchanged fire, was far more impactful from so far away.

We all assumed that this would carry on for upwards of a half hour, given the three ships and planet were equally matched when it came to weapons and shielding. However, we were stunned into silence when the ships simply… stopped shooting. We knew that they couldn’t have surrendered, as we had been closely listening to all chatter between the ships, as well as the rest of the war elsewhere. Our confusion was amplified when, via the latter situation, we  saw that all Alternian forces had stopped dead. The war had suddenly been put on pause, and nobody could see why.

Via the benefit of hindsight, you all know what had happened. The Psiionic, controller of the Empress’s capital ship, made the decision only he could. He reached out using his influence and convinced every single Controller in the entire galaxy to destroy themselves in whatever way they could if the empire didn’t unconditionally surrender. The pause in activity was only the few seconds the the Psiionic required to convince the other Controllers, and at the same time voiced his ransome over the Alternian communication grid.  I’ll never forget the rasp that came over the intercom, words that seemed almost to be relying a divine prophecy. “Disband yourselves, or else  _ we _ will.”

At that exact moment, the three ships assaulting the planet jumped so violently into hyperspace that we felt the station quiver around us. The Psiionic had done such a good job of convincing the Controllers, that they exerted enough will to cause the paths of their hyperspace courses to become visible  _ in normal space. _ All around the sky, we could see thin, green lines begin to slice through the back of space, as all Alternian ships raced toward the Sagittarius black hole. “Look!” someone remarked behind me. “It’s like the stars are moving!”

And then I remembered. 

  


_ “And the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind.” _

  


In my career I have had the privilege to interact with some of the best writers and philosophers of our generation in my search for truth. I’ve helped with, as well as been responsible, for some of the most significant theological and ideological revolutions in recent history, both on Earth and in the former empire. I’ve been almost endlessly praised for my ability to articulate my own thoughts as well as guess those of others. But, to this day, I am utterly lost when it comes to getting across the significance of these next few minutes, let alone putting words to when I went through. Even now, the echoes of joy are enough to move me to speechlessness. Almost every day, when I look out on the sunlit landscapes of the day, or gaze at the simmering, porous curtain of night, I flash back to that day, to the moment when I felt the divine presence for the first time. Yet I am unable to relate it to even the most advanced thinkers. I don’t know why this revelation had the effect that it did, particularly because it was not a revelation at all. I gained no new knowledge from the experience, as I had been free of the Hemoistic doctrine for almost all my life. 

So why did I react the way I did? Why was I looking through the window one moment, and on the floor the next, sobbing tears of joy? Why was it a verse about the world ending that drove me to this experience? Why here? Why not during one of my earlier conversations with Fred? Why now? Why not many sweeps earlier, when the resistance trainees were given our pep talk before being sent to our duty as double-agents? 

To answer that in a counterintuitive fashion, I will begin by utterly refuting the validity of those very questions. To ask why a word had no meaning at one time but did at another, or that a time had no meaning to one word but did another, is to assume that the actions we take and the consequences we face occur in a vacuum, and that they are not inherently caused by one another. It’s a mindset that I’ve seen many times over time, and in my experience only comes in two forms. It is either the silent gunman that I was in those now distant days, slowly shuffling from duty shift to duty shift without a word or sound, but screaming inside their own head, consumed by the evident mundanity of all that they are trying to accomplish. Or, it is the neo-hemoist, who shrouds themself in a cloak of smug assuredness and blind passion to their cause, but who in fact are rendered so anxious and paranoid about their own insignificance that they would deny it even to themselves. 

It is this thought process that I am so thankful to have escaped. In my reflections on all my experiences I can pinpoint vital turning points, crossroads in my journey that had I pick even a slightly different option would lead me to the sluggishness of the pessimist, or the undisciplined rage of the fascist. Perhaps even an unthinkable combination of the two. So, to form a half answer to my thesis question, I think that there on that station, staring out at the blazing light of will, all the ideological and principal doctrines the resistance had exposed me to finally sank in. 

Sure, I knew that all people are entitled to the fruits of their labour, and that all people deserve to be loved and fed, but beneath that was always the fact, the knowledge that both ticked and screeched inside my head, that death would come. That it would consume me and all the people I tried to help. Even Fred’s passage, the first pebble that initiated the landslide of enlightenment, only helped that incessant knocking. But when I connected the two, saw the kinship between the falling stars of the christian apocalypse and the fall of the Alternian Empire, a simple fact became clear to me: All things die, including evil; and the death of evil causes the birth of life. This empire, this hellish superpower, subdued and oppressed this galaxy for almost ten thousand years. It crushed the spirit of love and desire for creation out of the very suns that warmed their ancestors. The empire stripped its own people of moral and principle character, killing their minds and putting their bodies to work. The Empire had always been there, and seemed as immovable and a mountain, blocking out the sun, and as unstoppable as a river, carving apart the landscape.

_ And I watched it die.  _ I saw the trails of energy that liberated our galaxy from the hands of tyranny, and gave my people an opportunity to blaze our own trails through the cosmos, both in our minds, and in the universe. There, on that tiny station, around a tiny planet, in a tiny solar system, I watched the source of all our doubts and fears go up in bright green flames.

That night, I watched the hand of G-d, and felt the Divine presence. And I will never forget it.


End file.
